Commission a free report to calculate your savings

In these uncertain times, senior figures across the public sector are understandably preoccupied with savings. As a result, every programme or project needs to prove its worth with an accurate set of figures to support any outcomes. But when practitioners are busy actually doing the work, it’s hard for teams to find the time to produce a thorough set of calculations.

For that reason, Empowering-Communities’ Solutions Team decided to dedicate a resource to calculating how much each client has saved following the implementation of E-CINS and other products. This is a big step forward as now you can get a free savings report to support proposals and evidence your results.

Within the Empowering Communities team, Andy Shield is responsible for compiling these reports. Prior to joining us, he worked in an analytical capacity within Private Office at the Department for Work and Pensions. A few of you may have met him at our recent E-CINS conference.

The idea for a savings report came after we considered the outcomes achieved by Peterborough Council’s Pupil Referral Service. Our short paper, entitled ‘Calculating the cost of school exclusions’ highlighted that the council’s work had saved the taxpayer between £13,576,950 and £14,120,028. You can view the report here http://www.e-cins.co.uk/calculating-cost-school-exclusions/

The biggest factor in these savings was a successful reduction in school exclusions from around 100 per year to between 22 and 25 per year. Using that data, we referenced two approved academic papers – ‘Misspent Youth: The Costs of Truancy and Exclusion’ and ‘Exclusion from School: The Public Cost’. These include a range of figures, which when uprated, result in the following:

Annual costs of providing an equivalent year of education = £14,529 (uprated from Misspent Youth)

Annual costs to other agencies = £3,356 (uprated from Exclusion from School: The Public Cost)

Minus the regular costs of keeping someone in secondary school per year = £6,300

Total costs per exclusion per year = £11,585

Lifetime cost to society (Misspent Youth) = £60,342

Are the figures credible?

All too often savings figures are seemingly plucked out of thin air and as such they become easy to gloss over. However, we base our calculations on national costs derived from government reports and approved academic studies. We’re well aware of the need to keep them credible and always err on the side of caution.

Our calculations can cover a range of areas including health, crime reduction, social services, employment and education. For instance, we extract several unit costs from a database maintained by New Economy Manchester. We regard it highly as it undertakes tight quality assurance processes in cooperation with the Government.

How does a savings report help?

Aside from demonstrating the financial benefits of using E-CINS and other products, you can use our report to support new proposals. You’ll be able to forecast the benefits of a specific programme or project and gain the buy-in of senior colleagues. This, in turn, could help you to secure funding.

We’ll be updating our figures regularly as new data come to light.

Commission a free savings report

Get us involved early and we can help you to piece everything together. Even from just a few scraps of information, we can form some reliable findings.

To get started, email andy@empowering-communities.org and he will be in touch with further information.